Drones

How drones can save the public sector £1 billion

The potential of drones to deliver public services is growing, with recent research finding that drone take-up in the next 15 years could boost the UK economy by £16bn

Back in February 2018, five ‘pioneering’ cities were selected to design how drone technology could operate in complex city environments to address local needs, as part of the Flying High Challenge. Bradford, London, Preston, Southampton and the West Midlands began working with the Flying High team to look at how drones could be used in their communities, examining the potential for public service delivery, commercial opportunities and environmental impacts.

In December, a report from Nesta’s Flying High programme assessed the potential economic benefits of drones delivering public sector services like these in urban areas across the UK. The research found that cities are most receptive to the use of drones when used for publicly beneficial services like the transport of medical products, supporting emergency services and supporting infrastructure development and maintenance.

Analysis carried out by PWC, for Nesta, estimates that over the next 15 years the use of drones to support delivery of public services in urban areas in the UK could lead to £1.1 billion in cost savings and £6.9 billion increase in GDP. Of the UK’s largest cities, London, Birmingham and Leeds would have cost savings of £115 million (Birmingham), £53 million (London) and £53 million (Leeds) over the next 15 years.

The £1.1 billion uplift in net cost savings arises from two effects: improved productivity and reduced costs. Nesta highlights three cases to showcase the potential efficiencies: using drones to transport medical products, such as blood, lab samples and medical supplies, can help make health care services more time and cost effective; using drones to support emergency services can improve the speed of response on the ground; and the use of drones to support infrastructure development and maintenance can improve the safety of workers and quality of work, as well as save time and money.

Medical transport

Looking at London, the capital has 34 hospitals in close proximity. Deliveries between hospitals are frequent and tome sensitive, but traffic and poor road links restricts this need. Nesta Challenges analysed the potential for delivering pathology samples between Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital, which have a high volume of daily traffic between them. Short term benefits would include improved efficiency of medical logistics, quicker test results, improved outcomes for patients, and, essentially, less congested roads. Longer term, the move could enable patients to take urgent diagnostic tests at home, at a chemist or a doctors surgery and rely on a drone to collect the samples. In a similar fashion, prescriptions could be delivered by drone to a patient from a pharmacy.

Emergency Services

Nesta analysed how drones could assist the emergency services respond to road traffic accidents between Birmingham and Coventry by providing real-time information prior to first-responder arrival, as well as during the incident response. This might involve photographing, scanning and filming the scene to increase the effectiveness of the response.

Looking at cases of fire and rescue, drones were arguably better at providing high-quality information to support operational planners and controllers. This enables them to direct resources faster and more reliably when an alarm has been sounded by providing information to officers that otherwise would have been impossible to collect. This included work with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.

Long term, Nesta claims that a city-wide emergency drone network could provide rapid initial assessment and ongoing monitoring of emergencies. As technology advances, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, drones could also be able to carry out more complex tasks, such as proactively monitoring traffic for incidents and identifying people in need of help.

Boosting infrastructure

Drones can be used for several tasks linked to construction, including surveying and, monitoring build progress, inspecting quality of work and supporting health and safety. Nesta Challenges explored the use of drones to support the development of the Preston Western Distributor and East-West Link Road, which will connect Preston to a new junction on the M55. It established that drones could help assess the progress of a project, estimate the amount of resources used, check for incorrect or low quality work and identify health and safety risks.

Additionally, they could also search autonomously for, diagnose and repair infrastructure problems as well as work in groups to cover a large infrastructure project more quickly. As robotic technology improves, drones could also start to help with the construction itself by delivering items to workers and performing dangerous tasks. L

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.nesta.org.uk/blog/report-howdrones-can-save-the-public-sector-1bn/

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